Walking in a Neon Wonderland

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September 18th 2008

Published: October 8th 2008

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El Scook Y Natalia

I love you / I hate you

You fat temptress

Training to be a Sumo involves pleasure ("eat, you fat feck!"), and pain ("train, you lardy layabout!"), in roughly equal measures. A left over from imperial society, the fledging fatsos are beaten within an inch of their flabby lives by over enthusiastic trainers for indescritions such as:

- throwing salt in the wrong part of the ring (unsurprisingly, given their enormous girth, condiments are sacred to the sumo)
- having a hair out of place in the Chonmage (the sumo hairstyle of choice - basically the rising sun take on the Croydon facelift)
- not looking hot enough in white nappies

It's not such a bad life, mind. The sumos that do make the grade earn a fortune, and lead rock star-like existences. We were lucky enough to catch one of the twice annual sumo-fests in Tokyo with ex-Nottingham pal Helen and baby Kiki. It's quite a spectacle, although even the longest bouts are over in seconds. The best bit (as with much of life) is that you get to drink to excess during the course of the afternoon. By the end of the day everyone is a bit squiffy and rowdy, and the ref gets pelted with cushions

Asahi Beer Building

Affection known as the 'golden turd'

for any controversial decision.

Tokyo, by the way, is the one place I've been that makes London feel small and provincial. Mexico city was statistically bigger, but then much of that is basically shanty towns around the outskirts. Tokyo is non-stop metropolis. From the so-called outskirts to the centre, it's built up, bright and shiny. Which leads me to wonder - where the hell did they get that much neon from? And where does neon come from anyway? Neon mines? The mind boggles.

But Tokyo isn't just big, it's also rather confusing. I don't think you've ever really been lost until you've tried to find a restaurant in Tokyo just from an address... Only the really major roads have road names - which makes precise navigation practically impossible for the non Japanese speaking visitor (which, lets face it is practically all of us!) Occasionally we succeeded in getting where we wanted to go, but this was generally a happy accident. More often than not we would end up somewhere good, but not where we'd been intending.

Anyway, it's seemingly impossible for a westerner to write about Tokyo without launching into cliches about how crazy the place is.

Tokyo Market

Busy

I'm going to try and resist, but one thing that really did catch my eye was an 800 metre (or half mile, imperialists) queue outside the new H&M store, which was being policed by about 10 police-folks. And this was on a Tuesday night, and not even the sales. Bonkers.

Perhaps another cliche is to go on about how nice everyone is here. Well, they are. People will happily go out of their way to take you where you need to go. Indeed, as a Gaijin you need to be careful of even appearing a bit lost, or someone will descend on you with a few words in English and a map. By the time we'd left Tokyo we'd both resolved to be more helpful to tourists in London!

The other real noticeable feature about this place is the shopping... This city is one big shinto shrine to capitalism. If you think they do capitalism well in the states, think again. Shopping malls here are big enough to have seats at the U.N.

Suffice to say Tokyo was a welcome diversion on our way back to the UK, and probably quite good for us. We're not exactly